PEORIA, IL -- The Peoria District 150 School Board ended the year on July 1 and opened its new year in an unusual site, the Romain Arts and Culture Community Center, formerly Greeley School.
Despite 90-degree temperatures outside the huge brick building wasn't too hot, thanks to huge fans that also competed with the microphones.
The public comments were recorded, but the sound likely is poor.
Activist critic Sharon Crews began with criticism of the Summit Learning Program. Her comments, and information on Summit, are listed below. It's not known whether the board will pursue this program.
Critic Terry Knapp praised the board for preserving Blaine Sumner School, which he said is "a beautiful building." The school is "the hub of the South Side community," he said.
He compared it to the fate of Harrison School, a derelict building the district sold to someone who was supposed to demolish it but never did.
He asked the board to take the $6 million slated for the charter school Quest, and instead "invest it in the district."
He and others praised Ernestine Jackson, who lost the election to the board to newcomer Chase Klaus. The Peoria Journal Star story has information on Klaus and Ernestine Jackson, who was out of town and did not attend the meeting, her final one.
Dan Adler and Doug Shaw were reelected president and vice present of the new board.
-- Elaine Hopkins
Here are the comments of Sharon Crews:
Recently at a social event, I was seated next to a school administrator who is well acquainted with Summit Learning. I took this opportunity to ask some questions. I was reassured the program strongly recommends classes of no more than fifteen students. Since small class sizes are an impossibility in District 150, this program should not be given further consideration and maybe it isn’t.
I was told that this program was not for gifted students. Whether Washington students are gifted or enriched, they should not have been Summit’s guinea pig.
I believe I was told that there are twenty components from which students can choose. Are there only a total of twenty components or does each grade level for each subject have a component? I believe components consist of lessons, homework, and quizzes that determine when a student moves on to a higher level.
What subjects are offered to students at each grade level or are all components a hodgepodge of various subjects?
One complaint about Summit Learning is that there is no research to show if it has been successful in any schools. My question is: Who decided the grade level of each component? The major question for which parents need an answer is: Who decides the grade level at which their students are learning and succeeding or failing? Textbook companies provide this information; Summit does not.
The real deception of Summit is that it is a personalized program for which students get to decide what they want to learn to prepare for their futures. Whom are you kidding?—the author of Summit with the support of the Zuckerbergs and Bill and Melinda Gates choose the subject matter from which our students would choose.
These billionaires more than likely want to shape the world in the image that is best for their pocketbooks, and you want to allow Summit to prepare our students for the jobs (not careers) that will enrich American corporations. How many suburban or private schools have chosen Summit Learning for their students? My guess is few or none.
I was told that when Summit is used, teachers rarely teach; students are always on the computers. That is a subject that needs to be discussed at great length because there are serious questions about the harm done to students’ physical, mental, and emotional health, sitting at a computer for hours on end.
How many hours a day does Summit require? Teachers are not teachers for all those hours; they are just monitors or guides or maybe not assigned at all. Undoubtedly, they will have to handle discipline problems which might well stay the same or increase with students sitting at computers.
Teachers will probably grade homework. Summit requires that teachers determine each learner’s path throughout the year while an application tracks student progress. Why would potential teachers want to spend thousands of dollars and hours of time in college to get a job playing second fiddle to a computer? You can count on an even greater teacher shortage with this plan.
Please, please board members say “No” if you haven’t already.
Here is the handout Crews gave to the board:
COMPLAINTS ABOUT SUMMIT LEARNING (#1 The Best Gift for Children, #5 Facebook Comments are the most enlightening and #8 Complaints from an 11-year-old). These articles online will take you to other articles to which these authors are referring.
Comments I added are in green. Comments I consider especially significant are in red.
#1 - The Best Gift for Children: Saying NO to Summit Online Learning
December 22, 2017 By Nancy Bailey 4 Comments
During this holiday and Christmas season, salute the fine parents of Cheshire, Connecticut who said NO to Summit online learning!
Theresa Commune said her 11-year-old son just wanted more attention from teachers than he was getting. “They need teachers to get them to love learning at this stage,” she said.
Especially great is that parent petitions in local school districts work! Parents can still fight reform, and particularly the push to have their children facing screens all day in school.
Summit Learning is the Chan Zuckerberg initiative to convert schools into all-technology—pushing real teachers out of the classroom, and ending brick-and-mortar public schools.
Summit has the audacity to call themselves public schools even though they are a charter management organization (CMO). Summit operates eight schools in the San Francisco Bay area, and three schools in Washington state—eleven schools altogether. But they currently push their online program into 330 schools across the country. Here’s the list.(See online article)
The blog Wrench in the Gearsdescribes this tech transformation. The New Schools Venture Fund Summit 2017, an invitation-only event, expects over 1,000 entrepreneurs, funders, policy makers, educators, and community leaders to converge on the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, CA next week to “reimagine education.” Technology features prominently with sessions on rigor in personalized learning, tech in special education, tech as an equity issue, and developing a robust R&D program to “drive the kinds of technological breakthroughs we need in education.” Platinum level event sponsors include the Gates and Walton Family Foundations, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative-all forces behind the Ed Reform 2.0 digital curriculum agenda.
Summit Learning is personalized, mastery, or competency-based learning on the computer, and there is no research to indicate this is the best way for students to learn.
Personalized Learning and Ongoing Assessment - For years, students have been bombarded with high-stakes tests. Parents have fought this tooth-and-nail with the Opt Out movement. Now, with Summit, students will be tested nonstop online!
Summit’s agenda removes decision-making from teachers, parents and the local school board. From the Summit Learning website: Summit developed the Cognitive Skills Rubric built into our Summit Learning Platform in collaboration with the SCALE team at Stanford, whose mission is to improve instruction and learning through the design and development of innovative, educative, state-of-the-art performance assessments and by building the capacity of schools to use these assessments in thoughtful ways, to promote student, teacher and organizational learning. Our rubric is also based on prior learning from the Buck Institute’s work in cognitive skill analysis.
If interested, check out who partners with SCALE (see above). The Buck Institute is all about technology and Project-Based Learning (PBL), another name for all-tech. Check out the Buck Institute’s partners.
Self-Directed Learning and the Reduced Role of Teachers
Summit involves self-directed instruction, kids teaching themselves on the computer. They claim it is a falsehood that teachers will no longer be needed.
The reality is, with Summit, teachers take on an entirely different role. They assist students according to what children do online. Technology rules the classroom, and students work mostly alone. Instead of technology as a teaching tool, teachers play a subservient role to the computer. Eventually parents will be told students don’t need teachers.
But most adults understand that children need real teachers for learning.
Student Privacy Concerns
The blog NYC Public School Parents expressed student privacy concerns in 2016. The Summit platform has never been independently vetted for security protections – or shown to yield any educational benefits, and I believe is a very radical way to outsource instruction and student data to private companies.
More recently NYC Public School Parents revisited Summit Learning.
Last May, the Missouri Education Watchdog also described nervousness about Summit’s social-emotional assessments. Is it just a lucky coincidence that Zuckerberg’s Summit Schools is piloting the SEL assessments, when the president of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative “education philanthropy” is also part of the Aspen Institute’s National Commission to create SEL standards? Also probably coincidental, the Assessment for Learning Project (ALP) has some interesting partners. “ALP is led by the Center for Innovation in Education (CIE) at the University of Kentucky in partnership with Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) at EDUCAUSE.” ALP, the promoter of Equity Assessments (for SEL data) is funded by Hewlett Packard and Bill and Melinda Gates, also involved in the SEL commission.
Parents Realize Their Schools Work Already!
Despite such intense pressure, the parents in Cheshire, Connecticut petitioned against Summit and won! They realized early that the Summit program meant students were:
- spending too much time online
- viewing inappropriate content
- not getting enough guidance.
Facebook engineers who set up what’s called blended tech and a go-at-your-own-pace personalized learning program were not happy to have to end the program.
The Old Fashioned, “You’re Behind the Times” Complaint
Cheshire’s superintendent Jeff Solam said the change was too much for parents.
“Some people were more comfortable with a model where a teacher stands in front of a class and lectures for 40 minutes. We haven’t been comfortable with that model for a long time,” he said in an interview. “That’s an old factory model that doesn’t fit in to contemporary learning.”
This is a common unfair criticism when school reform is rejected. When there is push back, those who do the pushing back often get blamed for not embracing change. Or they are made to sound like they don’t know better.
My guess is most teachers rotate and work with students in groups. And even if they do lecture in front of the class, it works!
These subtle insults were used with Common Core, claiming that teachers rejected it because it was too much change and too fast for them to comprehend and implement. But teachers who rejected it didn’t like it.
The reality is that sticking students on a screen all day for their education has no proof what-so-ever as being the best way to learn.
Parents in Cheshire get it.
Superintendents are often used to push online programs into schools. We should question why. Are they being paid? Is it because they have such sparse budgets in other areas? How much tech must schools sign onto for funding? How much research do they do to determine the benefits of online learning compared to the losses?
Every School District If parents and teachers hear their superintendents and school boards talking about increasing technology in schools, they should determine what it means exactly, and what the role of the teacher will be in the class. Tech can be a useful tool, but it should not diminish the teacher’s role.
They should be especially concerned if they hear Summit Learning is coming to their school district. Parents in Connecticut didn’t buy Summit Learning. They started a petition. A local petition by parents may be the best way parents can push back harmful reform. Parents in Connecticut aren’t alone. Parents in Indiana and Kentucky are also questioning Summit. Teachers have also pushed back in places like Massachusetts.
Reclaiming our public schools from big business, through individual school districts…this is a great gift for students this holiday season! Sharing is caring!
#2 THE IDEAL:
If technology is to be effectively integrated in education then the future looks like one where schools still exist but their function is more discussion based where students and teachers can flesh out what they’re learning and converse with one another in addition to working with technology. (I don’t know why this is considered a new idea—it’s the way I always conducted classes until the last five years when discipline problems didn’t allow me the time or possibility.)
SUMMIT IS ALL ONLINE:
The above is MIRACLE CURE NONSENSE (Unproven) The Impact
#3
Summit Learning has fundamentally changed the way teachers, students, school leaders, and families experience education. It has turned children who weren't excited about school into ones who can't stop talking about it the moment they leave the classroom. It helps them understand what they are learning, why they are learning and how they learn best. Students can advocate for themselves, know their passions and interests, and have a long-term goal and plan rooted in these passions and interests. All while vastly improving test scores and college-acceptance rates. WHAT IS THE PROOF FOR THESE MOSTLY UNPROVEN CLAIMS
expense) a
#4 An Article By Matt Barnum - January 17, 2019 Summit Learning declined to be studied, then cited collaboration with Harvard researchers anyway, Summit Learning, a fast-growing “personalized learning” system, touts a partnership with Harvard researchers even though Summit actually turned down their proposal to study the model. The online platform is backed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy and is now being used in 380 schools across the U.S.
The program “is based on collaborations with nationally acclaimed learning scientists, researchers and academics from institutions including the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research,” Summit’s website says. “Summit’s research-backed approach leads to better student outcomes.” Schools have used that seeming endorsement to back up their decision to adopt the model. In fact, though, there is no academic research on whether Summit’s specific model is effective. And while Summit helped fund a study proposal crafted by Harvard researchers, it ultimately turned them down. “They didn’t tell us explicitly why,” said Tom Kane, a Harvard education professor and faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research. “All I can say is that the work that we did for Summit involved planning an evaluation; we have not measured impacts on student outcomes.” This article goes on to discuss the research issue.
#5 FACEBOOK COMPLAINTS
l of t Tania Brooks You must have an entirely different summit model than my ADHD son who has had to stay after daily, go to school on school vacations and do summer school because of this self paced model.
Lynne Munschauer Torrey Tania Brooks did he have special educator support outside the Summit classes themselves?
Tania Brooks Lynne Munschauer Torrey nope. He isnt eligible for help. We have tried. He is "too smart", but the platform is not conducive to his learning needs.
September 27, 2018 · My nieces school implemented this program this year. As of right now they don't even know what their grades are.
The Seventh grader spends all day at school on her Crome book and then multiple hours in the evening to keep caught up. She is in tears frequently over this program and doesn't like school this year. She has always loved her school and worked hard to get good grades! She is a great student.
The 4th grader that already struggles with reading has dropped another grade level in reading. She says she doesn't have to read because it reads for her.
It's pretty sad that the girls are ready to leave their friends, school and even parents for part of the week to come to my school district. It's bad enough they have possibly lost one semester of learning. I don't know if they can afford to lose a whole year. Especially the 4th grader. There is discussion going on to possibly make that Change at the end of this semester. My heart is breaking for those girls and any other student that is struggling with this program!!!!
Joe Thomas Summit is a program that the kids sit in front of a screen and try to learn. The problem is there is no changing the curriculum or altering the materials. It boasts that the kids get to learn at their own pace but is not so. Some procrastinate as the other subjects that they get taught in takes precedence, so Summit goes on the back burner and they wind up having to catch up. Also the teachers are not teaching it, they say to the kids everyone open up Summit and work on the next assessment, there is no discussion or showing them how to do it, they watch videos and read information to try to figure it out themselves. Doesn’t work for all kids, plus they are bored, they hate it and most kids cheat as they can open other tabs while working on assessments. When you take a test the grade you get is what you should get. That student should have studied hard to get a good grade not just take a test, see what they got wrong, take again and try to do better next time, and so on until they receive a passing grade. Teaching laziness, no accountability or deadlines They will never make it in the business world with this learning.
Amber Offutt This is all silicon valley propaganda. Here are a few snaps from my son's computer....these you YOUTUBE videos they have to watch. They are NOT appropriate!
Brian Steele May I ask wat area you are in, I am from southwest pa and am fighting this program with my local public school now, my 6th grader went from an a-b student to failing everything.
Jen Hansen Cieslewicz Brian this is exactly what I have been saying.
Joe Thomas Kids are all frustrated, hate the program and are doing horribly in my children’s school district- worst decision ever may pull our kids and go out of district
October 16, 2018 · My kids used to enjoy going to school and were proud of their good grades. Now they just stress about getting the assignments done and complain about going almost every day. Summit Learning is not beneficial to all kids, and may even be detrimental to some.m of Form
April 8, 2018 · My daughter's school started summit about 1 year ago. My daughter feels neglected by her teachers, and is switching out of her school because of Summit.
Summit, in her school, has become the teacher, and the teachers are just a classroom ornament. She is done with most her summit classes and just waits for the school year to be over. IF I had wanted her to do online school, I would have done so.
Way more computer time then indicated when we signed up for Summit. We were promised hands on projects. My idea of hands on and the teachers idea of hands on do not match. Numerous multimedia” presentations and A LOT of typing out papers is not really what was hinted at with the videos we were shown of kids building things and looking like they were getting a working knowledge on skills and concepts. My kids can already read and write very well so we will not be continuing next year.
#6 Connecticut School District Suspends Use of Summit Learning Platform By Tina Nazerian Dec 20, 2017 (Mixed opinions among parents—caused discontent)
A Connecticut school district announced this week that it is suspending the use of the Summit Learning Platform, an online educational tool that "helps students set and track goals, learn content at their own pace and complete deeper learning projects,” according to its website.
A letter signed on December 18 by Jeff Solan, the superintendent of schools at Cheshire Public Schools, cited “issues with content in the platform and a substantial degree of misunderstanding and misinformation within the community” as a primary reason for the district’s decision to suspend using the Summit platform.
The letter states that the suspension will be effective on December 22. Solan stresses that the decision “in no way reflects the work” of the educators.
In an interview with EdSurge, Solan said the district learned about Summit Learning in spring this year, as his team looked for ways to “leverage personalized learning” and give students opportunities to “grow as complex thinkers.” A team of administrators and teachers visited a school in Massachusetts that was using the platform and were impressed by what they saw. Over this summer, a team of teachers went to a Summit training session in Providence, Rhode Island; another group of administrators went to a session in Oakland, Calif.
Five schools in the Cheshire district—four elementary and one middle school—began using the Summit Learning Platform this fall. “We went through implementation this fall, had a number of informational nights [which were] not really incredibly well attended,” Solan says. But “there was pushback online from a small but vocal and coordinated group” of parents.
One concerned parent is Michael Ulicki, who has a child in the district who was using the Summit Learning Platform. He claims he’s seen no long-term data that suggest the platform works, and in the absence of evidence worries that the pilot is “an experiment on our children.”
Ulicki also raised concerns about the appropriateness of the content. One of the websites that the platform linked to, he says, was a list of ancient Roman literature and poetry that included some sexually explicit art.
Starting in November, parents circulated an online petition that asked the district to suspend the pilot of the Summit platform until there could be a more detailed review of the content.
Ulicki, who signed the petition, stresses that the group’s effort was to suspend the platform so that it could go through a transparent curriculum review that involves the public, and then, if there’s a decision to move forward, have a comprehensive evaluation plan in place. To date, the petition has more than 450 signatures. Another prickly issue—one that superintendent Solan believes has been misunderstood—concerned how the district and the Summit Learning Platform would collect and share data.
Ulicki says parents like him wanted clear answers about what kinds of student data would be collected by and shared with Summit Learning, and believes the contract between the school district and Summit was “very poor” in terms of protecting student privacy. Yet Solan disagrees, saying the school district’s attorneys reviewed the contract twice.
Solan acknowledges that the district shares with Summit students’ names and email addresses—and “yes, Summit can see the performance of how kids are doing on any sort of online content assessments that they’re taking related to the coursework to improve the program.” But the contract, he says, explicitly states that Summit “cannot sell the data.”
“But you know, some people, you couldn’t convince them that, even though the contract was ironclad,” Solan says. “They felt like because Facebook was involved, then the contract wasn’t valid in some way, shape or form.” Summit Learning is supported by The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability company created by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. The platform was born from Summit Public Schools, a network of charter schools that has refined the software and teacher training model over the years. (Facebook had lent some engineers to help build Summit’s early personalized learning software.)
#8 Summit Learning: Pros and Cons - a list by an 11-year-old
Pros: Sorry I couldn't think of any\
Cons:
- We suddenly have a LOT of responsibility
- It makes us feel a lot more stressed than we should (my friends think so too)
- A lot of people get headaches from staring at screens (including me)
- We have less human interaction than we should
- Our teachers don't have to help us due to HUGE classes
- The videos are blocked sometimes
- The videos are hard to follow
- Math class is completely confusing for everyone I have asked (we need someone to explain what we're doing wrong to us)
- A lot of people are behind because the videos are usually terrible at explaining things
- We don't get to enjoy working with other kids (not even on a Google doc or slide)
- Summit is kind of just like the Wikipedia of cyber schools because anyone can add stuff and anyone can use it
- It feels like we're in cyber school but much much work#9 The Best Gift for Children: Saying NO to Summit Online Learning
-
- #9 Description of the Program and Complaints from Kansas parents and students:
- The program was implemented poorly without enough previous research.
- It has imposed various repercussions on these guinea pig towns.
- There are crucial questions to be asked about what this new type of program as for
- students and teachers.
- Potential users need to ask for a better explanation of what exactly Summit Learning is.
- Potential users need to gain details as to exactly how the program will be used.
- Summit’s promise that this program would “help even the playing field,” especially for
- underfunded schools, wasn’t fulfilled.
- Students spend more time on laptops than they have before.
- The program is typically free but laptops sometimes have to be bought separately.
- Problem: If this program’s software is to be in lower-income areas, affording a laptop
- will be difficult for some families.
- Students spend their days taking online quizzes and completing lesson plans at their own
- pace
- The teachers are there to assist and hold mentoring sessions to act as a “guiding hand.”
- . IN OTHER WORDS, TEACHERS DON’T TEACH
- Kansas parents claim that. shortly after Summit was used in classrooms, students started
- coming home with headaches and cramps. The full impact of technology has not been
- researched thoroughly enough for one to know the entire implications of using it for
- hours every day. Chances are, we’ll figure out the ramifications once the
- damage is already done. It’s necessary that we utilize technology carefully.
- Summit Learning, is foolish because when organizations wish to facilitate major
- alterations to an educational system, it must be done well.
- THE MOST IMPORTANT NEGATIVES RELATE TO A DRASTIC CHANGE IN
- TEACHERS’ ROLES AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STUDENTS AND
- TEACHERS
- As technology continues to advance, it leaves the future role of teachers to be questioned. Will the vast majority of present teachers simply morph into the guidance position, or will they be forced to adapt to online courses? Students will lack interpersonal relationships amongst their teachers and peers as well. School is a social outlet for numerous students and is oftentimes where connections and networks are formed. Teaching solely online is creating an assembly-line process for students. - 30 -